¶ … Chocolate Chip Cookies and Rubrics: Helping Students Understand Rubrics in Inclusive Settings by Elizabeth W. Hall and Susan J. Salmon explains the importance of using rubrics in the classroom and contains useful information about the use of rubrics for the teachers and students alike.
The article effectively explains the usefulness of rubrics for students in understanding the performance expectations of different assignments, as a self-evaluation tool for assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and describes how teachers can use rubrics to assess the performance of their students. It also contains an interesting exercise for developing an analytical rubric through discussion of the characteristics of "chocolate chip cookies" by the students. The exercise can be used by teachers in classroom settings as it is practical, interesting and simple.
Another theme of the article is that rubrics are particularly useful in helping students with disabilities to evaluate their work. (Para on "Why Use Rubrics") A close reading of the article reveals that relevance of rubrics to "students with disabilities" or "students with special needs" is not fully explained. In other words, the authors do not sufficiently discuss their implied thesis that rubrics could be particularly useful for special students. On the other hand, it has been accurately suggested at the start of the article that rubrics can prove useful for students "with and without disabilities."
Secondly, in my opinion, the article would have been more comprehensive if it had also contained an example of a holistic rubric besides the example of the analytical rubric (the chocolate chip cookies exercise) provided by the authors. Space considerations, perhaps, prevented the authors from doing so. Overall, however, it is a useful article for teachers and students about the practical use of rubrics in classroom settings.
Reference
Salmon, Susan J. And Hall, Elizabeth Wikfors. (2003) "Chocolate Chip Cookies and Rubrics: Helping Students Understand Rubrics in Inclusive Settings" Teaching Exceptional Children, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 8-11
Journal Reflection
